Many children are lost every day. Often, the parent or legal guardian quickly finds the child by simply searching the area or vicinity in which the child was last known to be. However, in other circumstances, the parent or legal guardian is not able to find the lost child within an hour or more. In such circumstances, the parent or legal guardian may contact local law enforcement authority to assist in the finding of the child. The involvement of local authority may also lead to the successful finding of the lost child.
In more dire circumstances, for example, when a child has been lost for several hours or days, the parent or legal guardian will often attempt to get the local community involved in the searching for the lost child. In this regard, the parent or legal guardian may create flyers with a picture of the lost child and pertinent information, and place the flyers at various locations around the local neighborhood. Additionally, the parent or legal guardian may telephone neighbors, friends and acquaintances in the neighborhood to ask them for assistance in searching for the child.
Such traditional methods for locating lost children have many drawbacks. For instance, the chances or probability of a lost child being found generally decreases non-linearly over time. Thus, it is desirable for the lost child to be found quickly as soon as his/her disappearance is known. However, the traditional ways of locating a lost child, such as contacting the local authority or seeking the assistance of members of the local community, often take substantial amount of time. In the case of contacting local authority, often the local authority has legal restraints before it can commence a search for a lost child or person. And, in the case of contacting members of the local community, this is usually a time-consuming tasks.